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Women are being asked to give prospective employers evidence they are virgins (Picture: cigdemhizal)

‘The ideal candidate must like children, have excellent behavioural control, be happy to spend long hours marking, and willingly provide the headmaster with either proof of your virginity, or a full rundown of your gynaecological health.’ Wait, what?

Both are invasive and, many argue, unnecessary privacy violations. So why exactly do these employers need to know the state of their staff’s gynaecological health?

According to the education department: ‘The health inspections are intended to ensure, beyond technical ability, the physical and mental ability of candidates to keep their jobs for an average of 25 years.’ If health were the only decisive factor in staff retention, recruitment wouldn’t be such big business.

However scientifically sound this reasoning might be, it doesn’t change the fact that it’s unethical to demand prospective employees undergo invasive health tests prior to hiring, when the tests aren’t relevant to the role in question.

It’s also questionable that such testing would ensure 25 years of healthy service anyway – there are sadly far more causes of sickness and death than cervical cancer.

This isn’t to say that physiological testing is never pertinent to hiring.

Pilots must be tested to ensure they have 20/20 vision, athletes must be tested for drug consumption, cadets must undergo a full medical examination to make sure they’re physically able to cope with the physical demands of army life.

Is physiological testing relevant to teaching in any way? (Picture: Zurijeta)

But surely teaching isn’t a role that requires invasive medical tests. San Paulo’s education department posits that the intimate medical information they request is necessary to ascertain the candidate’s long-term (25 years) healthy service capability. It also commissions other health tests, for men and women, including a prostrate exam for men over 40.

In support of candidates’ privacy, Brazil’s national Special Secretariat for Women’s Rights said: ‘The woman has the right to choose whether to take an exam that will not affect her professional life.’

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The main issue here is one of privacy rather than one of feminism. No man or woman should be pressured into undergoing intimate medical tests for a prospective employer, when their health is not immediately relevant to the role in question.

Yes, sexually active women may be more at risk of developing cervical cancer, but the implication that a virgin would be a preferable candidate to a non-virgin because of future health issues which may or may not arise is not only discriminatory but fundamentally unethical. If it were men who were required to prove their virginity it would be just as deplorable.

We’re all rightly protective of our privacy, as the recent furores over everything from Edward Snowden and the NSA to Google Glass indicate.

Our personal health falls under the umbrella of ‘things we’re entitled to privacy about’. While we’re obliged to inform employers of existing medical conditions which may affect our ability to do our jobs, a virginity test or pap smear should definitely not be a mandatory part of a hiring process.